New Research on Addressing Gun Violence
In this edition of the newsletter, I’m highlighting some recent Brookings research I co-authored that looks at how states and localities are using American Rescue Plan funds to address underlying drivers of gun violence.
But before I dive in, a few items to note. First, Biden’s student debt relief policy has many crying that the policy is regressive. Such arguments often center on income, rather than wealth. But while conceding that this policy does help only a small percentage of Americans - the 13.5% who have student loan debt - it nevertheless is particularly important for Millennial borrowers who hold 32% of all student loan debt, but who own less than 7% of all U.S. wealth, despite making up 22% of the nation’s population. Loan relief is also certainly less regressive than Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy. And it’s also less regressive than allowing homeowners to deduct their mortgage interest from their taxes (see the figure below). And it’s also less regressive than states taxing groceries to pay for K-12 education.
Second, with so much attention to debt relief, you may have missed that the Biden Administration also cemented DACA protections for undocumented Americans who arrived as children and who lack citizenship. Notably though, this change only applies to those residents who arrived prior to June 15, 2007. We still desperately need Congress to pass humane, fair, and sensible immigration reform to ensure that there are non-costly/lengthy legal pathways to citizenship, but also that there are protections for those residents who grow up here as Americans.
Third, the series finale of Animal Kingdom airs on Sunday. It’s a crime family drama unlike anything else on screen. As I described it to a friend on Twitter: It has some powerful character arcs with emotional payouts spanning seasons. It's also filled with high octane heists, with several episodes in a season focused on setup, teasing how it sometimes goes wrong. Also doesn't try to say anything, just tells a story. Do yourself a favor and check it out.
Reducing Gun Violence by Addressing The Social Determinants of Safety
My colleague Hanna Love and I talked to 14 state and local leaders to learn how they are using federal American Rescue Plan funds to address the root causes of gun violence by investing in economic opportunity, built environment, social cohesion, and civic infrastructure. In our new report, we highlight innovative examples, share insights from our interviews, and provide some recommendations gleaned from the experience of these leaders.
For each of the four categories - economic, environment, social, and civic - we cite empirical research that supports the significance of these factors to gun violence and the efficacy of addressing these factors in reducing violence.
We write:
From investing in youth employment programs to revitalizing vacant lots to improving the quality of neighborhood housing, a wealth of community-based safety interventions are proven to reduce violent crime—including gun violence—in the places most impacted by it, and tackle the conditions of inequality that allow violence to concentrate in the first place.2 But far too often, these community-based interventions are under-funded, particularly when compared to more punitive approaches.3
Here’s a figure from the report that catalogues innovative uses of funds to address economic opportunity:
You can read the full report here.
We also published an op-ed in Next City titled: It’s Not Just Mental Health. Addressing ‘Social Determinants of Safety’ Can Prevent Gun Violence. Here we make the argument that lawmakers need to take a more expansive view of gun violence as a public health issue, and direct resources and investments to disinvested neighborhoods that most suffer from that violence.
We write:
When lawmakers focus only on mental health and ignore the broader array of place-based social determinants, they are left reacting to trauma and mental illness rather than proactively addressing the conditions that can prevent trauma and promote both individual and community well-being.
Biden’s Safer America Plan acknowledges the importance of place-based social determinants of safety interventions, allocating $5 billion into community violence intervention programs. But this pales in comparison to the funding provided to mental health crisis response ($15 billion) and the police ($13 billion). It’s a missed opportunity to prioritize forward-looking, life-affirming investments that keep communities safe.
Fortunately, as we document in our new report, state and localities are filling the gap by allocating American Rescue Plan dollars to interventions targeting the social determinants of safety. Wisconsin, for example, allocated $25 million to the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Violence Prevention Project and Milwaukee’s Office of Violence Prevention to disrupt cycles of gun violence by addressing trauma and offering wraparound supports.
Many of these safety initiatives operate through traditional public health infrastructure (such as the Medical College of Wisconsin effort), but others are paradigm shifts in the ways states and localities think about public safety and health. “Education is violence prevention, workforce development is violence prevention,” Jessica Meyers, director for the St. Louis Area Violence Prevention Commission, told us.
You can read the full op-ed here.
Ultimately, we are using data to advance the argument that we can make our communities safer, healthier, and more prosperous by investing from the bottom-up. This is both a more effective and more moral approach to reducing than gun violence than relying on over-policing and mass incarceration in an attempt to mute the symptoms of distress emerging from broken communities. We are especially excited about local-level work to reach at-risk youth - to ensure that they are never caught up in the criminal legal system in the first place, but are rather given productive pathways out of distress, trauma, and violence and toward flourishing.
What I am Reading Elsewhere:
Two of my favorites - Benjamin and Jenna Silber Storey - writing in the Times on Plato, Aquinas, and the sacred task of liberal arts institutions to help "young people learn to give reasons for the choices that shape their lives and to reflect about the ends they pursue."
Given that a major driver of tuition hikes in higher-ed is the fact that the market is subsidized by the government, I thought it was a great time to revisit this Niskanen Center paper: Cost Disease Socialism: How Subsidizing Costs While Restricting Supply Drives America’s Fiscal Imbalance
Brookings published recent research suggesting that Long Covid is keeping as many as 4 million people out of work.
In an Atlantic article about why rent is hike, Derek Thompson notes a fundamental policy paradox: “The more the Fed raises rates, the more it discourages construction—which not only reduces overall growth but also takes new homes off the market. Scaled-back construction means fewer houses—which means higher rents."
The social researcher Raj Chetty has two new papers out on social capital that looks at how economic connectedness as a place-based phenomenon enables income mobility. Here is a short Brookings blog that highlights some of the main findings. I’m particularly struck by the comment that “rich people make friends of college classmates, poorer people make friends of neighbors…”